A Perfect System
by tobia
Summary: Joan is released from the hospital after the diagnosis of Lyme's disease and must deal with the constant reminders of her conversations with God.


**A Perfect System**

**Note: All characters, etc. belong to their respective creators and/or the owners of legal rights. Only the story is mine! **

Joan Girardi didn't talk all much anymore. She didn't really need to; there were always others to talk for her here. Doctors explained symptoms, nurses discussed medications, techs outlined tests....Whenever somebody left, somebody new came in to take their place and talk some more. It was enough to give Joan a headache. Yet the constant speech never ceased; there was always a new pill, complete with its own explanation, to give her instead.

Joan sat on the edge of the freshly made hospital bed as her mother's words fell on her ears like the meaningless pitter-patter of rain drops. Joan had long since learned to hear without really listening. She already knew they were discussing Lyme's disease anyway. Actually, they were just discussing Lyme's; the Girardis and the bacteria were on a first-name-basis now. Lyme was almost like another family member: Lyme Giardi. Joan sometimes wondered if her mother would set an extra place at the dinner table for the bacteria.

Startled out of her thoughts by the sound a knock on the door, Joan looked up to see the rest of her family standing in the room. Their movements were uncertain, and they almost seemed to be lost. Even after three weeks him of visiting her, it seemed to Joan that Will never lost his tentativeness. Her father who could go into a gun fight with every bit of self-assurance in the world was incredibly skittish when it came to hospitals, never quite sure what to do or say.

_This was how he acted after Kevin's accident_, Joan thought. _ Different child, different problem, same situation... Well, not quite the same; Kevin didn't talk to God_.

Talked to God. That's what she had thought she'd done when that cute boy had stopped her at school, spoke of her deepest secrets, and told her to get a job. In reality, the only thing that had spoken to her had been Lyme's. The last nine months had been nothing but a hallucination, a symptom of an incurable and insidious disease.

Joan never told her family members, the doctors, or Grace about God. There was no point in drudging that up, in making her family worry even more. As Kevin had once said, her parents had suffered too much tragedy already. Joan silently apologized for failing them.

She and Kevin had become much closer over the past three weeks, brought together by a bond of illness, the knowledge that your life will never ever be the same again. He came by often and sat with her. They rarely talked, a blessing these days. Kevin just sat there in his chair, held her hand, and looked at her with an expression of understanding. He possessed a great deal of empathy for Joan, but even he did not realize the depth and power of her loss. When they did talk, they spoke of hospitals. It was nice to not his chair stared at it, he said, but it brought back to many memories of the accident...

Joan remembered when Kevin had been in the ICU, how she had seen him and prayed, even though she had never prayed before.

_He knew that prayer,_ she thought_. He remembered how I didn't keep it. I never told anyone about that prayer, not even when the priest came to pray with Mom. But He knew, and He forgave me for not thanking Him, for not keeping my promise..._

She realized, of course, that there was no "He," just a hallucination. The mention of the prayer had just been part of an elaborate tapestry of disease and confusion. The only thing that came close to knowing her prayer was the deer tick that had bitten her. Yet all the logic in the world could not halt the flood of memories from surfacing and taunting her.

She understood now why Kevin had burned that album with all the sports clippings and photos her father had painstakingly collected and assembled. It hurt too much to look at something which had been the basis of your whole life before and now you could never go back to it. You remembered it enough anyway; there was no need for anything to prompt you.

Luke stood right behind Kevin, listening intently to the nurse's instructions. Luke had always been more of a chemist/physicist than a biologist, but that didn't stop him from researching the depths of Lyme's. He read every JAMA article he could find on the subject, and Joan bet he could understand every word. Luke always babbled away to the doctors, and Joan was just grateful he didn't talk to her. Luke was fascinated with the subject; she just wanted it to stop bothering her.

The nurse finally completed her endless explanation and handed Helen a bag containing the millions of drugs Joan had been prescribed. Helen looked at the bag with a degree of uncertainty.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Girardi," the nurse said. "We'll send instructions and don't hesitate to call if have any questions or problems."

Helen thanked her and took the bag. She smiled, but Joan could see her literally shake in fear.

_Does this bring back memories for her, too? Memories of the night she was raped? Is it some kind of cruel joke that all our lives get destroyed, and we end up lying in hospital beds with broken bodies and broken souls? He said His system is perfect...This isn't._

_Stop it, _Joan commanded herself. _Stop thinking about Him. It wasn't real._

She must have told herself that a million times, yet she could never seem to follow her own instructions. She always remembered, even if she didn't believe.

Helen turned to Joan.

"Are you ready to get dressed, honey?" she asked.

She nodded enthusiastically. Wearing the same paper hospital gown day after day made every ounce of fashion sense in her rebel. How nice it would be to wear something with some atheistic value again! On a less superficial level, it also meant she was going to finally get out of this hospital and leave behind all the terrible memories it contained.

She stood slowly, yet still managed to stumble a little in pain. She was quite often sore-another symptom of Lyme's-and still was somewhat shaky on her feet. Helen rushed over to Joan and guided her gently to the bathroom, handed her clothes, and then shut the door.

Joan longed to wear a skirt just to spite her mother for not allowing her to wear one the last day of school, but Helen had brought only blue jeans and a red shirt for home. The clothes had once fit her well but now seemed to hang off her body. The doctors had not yet perfected the art of controlling Joan's nausea-again, Lyme's induced-and she had lost a lot of weight during three weeks of hospital confinement. She gently touched the place on her leg where the rash had been. She had been told later that the rash was actually beneficial to her because it pointed the doctors in the direction of Lyme's and instead of some other disease or mental illness.

_Mental illness. Imagine them thinking I was a paranoid schizophrenic with a messianic complex like c. I hated it when he said that because I saw myself in her. I was glad to be like her; I thought it was a gift. It wasn't. It cursed her, and it cursed me. I have Lyme's; she was insane. We both thought we spoke to God._

She finished dressing and walked methodically out of the bathroom. A new nurse had appeared with a wheelchair in tow and motioned for Joan to sit down. Joan had often ridden in wheelchairs or on stretchers on the way to get yet more tests performed on her. She had gotten used to it to a degree but still found it degrading. More than once she wondered how Kevin put up with it.

Her family and she began to leave. Two kids in wheelchairs, one who had thought she talked to God. She looked at her mother's face, wrought with fear and her father's obvious discomfort and silently apologized once again for all she had done to them, for all Lyme's had done.

_Some perfect system_, she thought.


End file.
